09/03/2018

Kel’s Reading Room

Wherein here and there, now and again, to this one and that one I offer up the lush, overlooked, overwrought, hallucinogenic and old-school.

This time, Celtic Art, The Methods of Construction by George Bain. Published in 1951 and still in print by Dover, it’s the first meticulous, one might even say compulsive, lesson plan to creating knotwork, spirals, key patterns, lettering, animals, plants and human depictions in one of the great living ethnic art forms. There are a hundred and fifty-some hand-drawn pages and every last one is illustrated.

Sensual, scrupulous, daunting, dense… and comforting: